


The Mechanic

by Arcane_Light



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5396876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcane_Light/pseuds/Arcane_Light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The insertion of an additional character into The Hunger Games Trilogy. Katniss meets one of the Victors of District 6, Evelyn Hollis, who now acts as Beetee's assistant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Evelyn Hollis - Victor of the 66th Hunger Games

_"Raised in the frigid winters of the northern mountains, Evelyn Hollis hails from District 6, Panem’s lively transportation hub. Trained as a mechanic by her father and brothers, Evelyn was taught how to dismantle a high speed train and reassemble it within hours, all before she entered school. Once she did, she flew through her schooling three years early and immediately joined her family’s workforce, building trains and hovercraft at impressive speeds. This skilled technician first captured the Capitol’s attention with her revolutionary dual propulsion technology and went on to win their hearts with her steadfast work ethic and unwavering charm. Evelyn dominated the 66th Hunger Games with previously unseen levels of stealth and craft, demonstrating a mastery of silence and camouflage. This proud Victor is a shining example of the diligence and skill that continues to propel Panem into the future."_

Height: 5’10”  
Weight: 145 lbs  
Age: 24  
Hair: brown  
Eyes: brown  
Weapon: stealth, camouflage, intelligence  
District: 6  
Games: Victor – 66th  
Alliance: The Rebellion  
Allies: Beetee Latier, Wiress, Kane Anwell, Haymitch Abernathy, Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Finnick Odair, Annie Cresta, Mags Flanagan  
Status: Alive  
Location: District 13


	2. Chapter 2

I see Peeta on the screen, the tightness of his face, the way his skin stretches over his sharp cheekbones. I see his red-rimmed eyes, the way they swell and glisten when our propo flickers in and out of signal. I see him shouting at me, warning us of the attack on 13. He saved us, and they all know it. The next day Coin calls for me and I'm ready to demand a rescue of the Victors. I walk into the command center and immediately am on edge. There's a girl at the table, standing beside Beetee, and I don't recognize her at all.

“Katniss,” Coin motions me over, “I’d like to introduce you to Evelyn Hollis, our top researcher.” 

The tall girl extends her hand and I shake it. Her fingers and arms are long and slender, but I can feel the strength in her grip, the possessed hunger for survival. The grip of a tribute. 

“Researcher?” I ask, watching her as she watches me. Suddenly, her expression warms and there is a glimmer of mischief in her dark eyes.

“That’s politician speak for spy,” she smirks. A small burst of air rushes out my nose, the remnant of a laugh. The closest thing I’ve felt in a while. Evelyn reaches down to sweep a page across the digital screen of the table and tucks a stray, knotted lock behind her ear. Her fingers dance so quickly over the screen I can hardly tell one from the other. At one point, it looks like she has ten on one hand, despite the fact that she's missing two on her right.

“I remember you,” I say and her eyes flick up to meet me. I recognize that expression, too. The look of a victor being pulled back to the arena. “You won the 66th.” Evelyn smiles, the expression weak and tired. 

“And brought home the trophy for 6,” she says, a slight tremor in her smooth movements. “It only seemed right for a 6 to bring home the 66th.” I know that look, that voice. It’s the same voice that comes out my mouth when I peel back my lips. Sad and tired and masked. Covering the pain with sarcasm. It’s a skill all victors learn very quickly. 

I remember watching the 66th Games. It was the first time they'd used snow in a long time. The gamemakers didn’t like to use cold weather arenas that often because it made everything a lot slower. The tributes, the kills, the action. But that year was different. The arena was so cold that 15 tributes died in just three days. They were stupid. They all swarmed to the warm places – the river, the lake, the cornucopia. They backed themselves up against the mountains. It was a vivid bloodbath, red on white. I remember thinking they were stupid; they didn’t know how to survive the cold. But Evelyn did. 

She was from district 6. People in the Capitol would joke that the people in 6 couldn’t see colors, their world was so dull and grey, but that didn’t stop their tributes. They may have only had four, but those four victors always impressed the Capitol elite. Evelyn was no exception. She seemed to flourish in the cold, revel in it. She bounced along the fluffy snow like she was made of air, all the while the other tributes trudged and fell and died. 

Evelyn was clever. She was charming. She was sly and smooth and eloquent. She could insult a Capitol elite to their face and they’d thank her, thinking it was a compliment. She wove words like poetry. Her charms won her sponsors, and her sponsors sent her snow-white gear. Thick, warm, camouflaged. She buried herself in the snow for three days to kill off three of the career pack, the boy and girl from 2 and the girl from 1. The boy from 1 was harder, though. He was tough. He survived the snow and made it to the caves, along with seven others, but so did Evelyn. It was there that Panem saw she wasn’t just clever, but creative. 

She crawled up into the caves, higher and higher until she disappeared into the shadows. No one saw her for days and people said she’d crawled too deep, gotten stuck and suffocated, but then the first pebble dropped and then the next, and every time they did they echoed through the caves and the other tributes would lash out with their swords and axes. She lured them to each other from above, let them kill each other off one by one until only the boy from 1 remained. 

She knew he was too large, too strong for her to face head on. He’d swing out in the darkness, cutting clean through stone stalagmites as thick as trees. But he couldn’t find her. I don’t think he ever realized where she was. She’d wait until he had just dozed to sleep and then drop a pebble, waking him over and over, never letting him sleep, leading him from one end of the caves to the other. It went on like that for four days, pebble after pebble, until the boy was dehydrated, starving, and mad with paranoia. Only then did Evelyn crawl down, sneak up behind him, and slit his throat with a sharpened rock. I don’t think he ever saw her coming. The Capitol cheered her name.

Evelyn shaved her head while she’d hid in the caves, ripped out her thick brown locks because they would flutter in the breezes of the caves and give away her position. Even now, eight years later, I think I can still see the raged ends where she had hacked them off, and the scars on her neck where she missed. 

“You gave the boy from 6 your hat and gloves,” I say, thinking back on the parachute that had delivered her winter gear, and how Evelyn had left the precious items below his tree one night. A stupid decision, most likely the reason she lost her own fingers, but thanks to her he didn’t die from frostbite, just a knife in the chest. Evelyn looks up at me and I think that maybe I can see his name there.

“Blyth,” she says, holding the word on her tongue like it's a precious gem. “Good guy.” 

Coin rejoins the table, Beetee at her side. He rolls up to the table and mounts his screen into the base, throwing an intricate map up onto the metal wall. I recognize it immediately – the tribute apartments in the Capitol – and scowl.

“Why are we looking at this?” I ask Beetee, trying to hold back the venom in my voice. The small man simply adjusts his glasses and zooms in on the screen, circling in on the base of the building. 

“It’s not as if I thought you might enjoy a little reminiscing,” Beetee answers. “I don’t much enjoy looking at it myself.” I lower my head and look back at the screen. 

“Evelyn has provided us with some of the finest intelligence we’ve ever received,” Coin steps forward, placing a well-meaning hand on Evelyn’s shoulder. “Her research ensures that our troops minimize casualties at every turn. And now she will do it again.”

“You’re sending out a new mission?” I ask. Coin nods and looks to Evelyn, as if passing the floor. I turn to the tall girl, expectantly. At first, she doesn’t look at me, only at the screen. Her eyes are fixed on it, as if the flickering blue lines somehow hold the secret to defeating the Capitol. Finally, she turns to look at me. 

“An extraction. I know where they’re keeping the other victors.”

Peeta.


	3. Chapter 3

My vision begins to swim and I know it’s because I’ve stopped breathing. Even when I slam my eyes shut I see Peeta’s face burned into the backs of my lids, his jaunt face and terrified eyes. A firm hand grips my shoulder and shakes it once, twice.

“Katniss,” Haymitch shakes me again, slapping a hand against my back and forcing me to breath. I suck down a ragged breath and my vision sharpens. They’re all looking at me, Coin with something resembling pity, the others with concern and hesitation. “Snap out of it, kid,” Haymitch pulls at his hat, the blond locks poking out like straw. “Gonna give me a heart attack.” 

“Where is he?” I ask, trying to control my stumbling steps as I rush toward Evelyn and the table. Evelyn doesn’t answer, just leans over the table, hands splayed across the flickering screen. She pulls out her fingers and the map zooms in, circling in on a section of rooms at the base of the tower.

“They’ve got him and the others stashed away here,” she says, eyes fixed on the screen. I step around the table and stop in front of the wall, the blue light filling my field of vision. “Our intelligence reports confirmed that Peeta, Johanna, and Annie are all in these six rooms. Which one for which, we’re not sure, but we know they’re in here.” 

I stare at the screen, at the six little boxes that are nothing more than lines on the wall. It seems so simple, but I know it’s not. My heart pounds in my chest and I can feel the familiar sting of tears biting behind my eyes. 

“How do you know they’re here?” I ask, still unable to believe. I see Peeta’s blue eyes looking back at me, hidden in the flickering lines of the map. I see his soft blond hair and the way it curls around his ears. I see his smile when I found him in the arena. 

Silence echoes through the room and I turn around, my temper flaring. It quickly dissipates upon seeing Evelyn’s face. She’s staring down at the table – no, staring at the ground, her entire body bent over and her hands gripping the edge of the table. Coin’s head is lowered, and neither Haymitch nor Beetee will look at me. In the end, it’s Coin who answers.

“A reconnaissance team infiltrated the Capitol,” she explains in the calm, metered voice I’ve come to expect. “They were able to send back twelve reports before our communication lines were cut. The twelfth report confirmed the location of the captured Victors.” 

“Cut?” I ask, my eyes flitting back and forth from face to face, waiting for a legitimate explanation. Beetee turns around.

“One of my colleagues was with the reconnaissance team,” he says, cleaning his glasses with the edge of his dull grey shirt. “A brilliant young man by the name of Kane Anwell. He was breaking into their surveillance systems, accessing secured information, defense codes, passwords, decryption keys, and sending it back to us. He was the only one capable of doing what I do, and, since I couldn’t very well go rolling through the Capitol streets, we sent Kane. Unfortunately, in the last transmission, Kane communicated that they had been tracked. We haven’t heard from them in over eighteen hours. We can only assume that they, too, were captured.”

Haymitch comes around the table and places a gentle hand on Evelyn’s shoulder. I can’t see her face, but I can see the tightness of her back, the slight shake in her shoulders. She thanks Haymitch before turning back around to the table. Her eyes are puffy now, red-rimmed. I know that look, too.

“He sent this map file and his own decryptions in the last transmission,” Evelyn says, a slight hitch in her once steady voice. “These six rooms were highlighted, along with three potential paths. Kane is…” She stops, her mouth half open with unsaid words, and stares at the screen. “Was smart. If he spent the time sending this transmission, if he spent time recording his own notes, it means he was sure. They are here.” 

There’s determination in her voice, a need to validate the legitimacy of his existence, as if the information he retrieved could ever justify his pointless death. Still, I feel sorry for her, and I feel a strange sense of companionship with her. Peeta is in the Capitol, hidden somewhere in the blue lines of the map, and so was her Kane once. On a different day, their places might have been flipped. 

Coin clears her throat and dismisses Evelyn with a pitying smile.


	4. Chapter 4

“Evelyn?”

The tall girl comes around the edge of a transport carrier, the massive propellers undoubtedly a product of her own design. She smiles at me from beneath a tattered hood and takes my outstretched hand. The third and fifth fingers are gone, one to the knuckle and the other completely, and she's strapped a makeshift prosthetic on to replace them. I reach up to shake it and grip her other shoulder tightly before we part. 

“Are you going with the extraction team?” I ask as a troop goes jogging past, guns in hand. 

“Sort of,” she half laughs. “I’ll stay at the edge of the Capitol’s outer ring, help Beetee boost the signal block.” There’s a device wedged in her ear, a transmitter of some kind, and it wraps around the back of her head to plug into a jack between her shoulders. The lights blink and beep beneath the fabric of her hood. There’s an antenna on her hip and I can hear muffled voices escaping. I wonder how she’s able to think with all the voices running through her head. 

“Why?” I shift forward as two soldiers pass by, and wish they would go around us instead of through us. 

“We need ears to the ground,” Evelyn explains, tapping the transmitter. There’s some kind of exoskeletal glove on her left hand that connects to a screen on her arm. Strings of data blink back and forth. 

“But you’re a mechanic,” I say, remembering the victory poster from her games. She’d held a giant wrench in her hand, almost as tall as she was, while a high-speed train zoomed along behind her. A far cry from the posters of District 3 victors, with their high-tech gear and futuristic suits. 

“Desperate times,” Evelyn scoffs with a smile and shoves her hands into her pockets. “And Beetee trained me pretty well, gotta give him that. But don’t you worry. I’ll find some trucks to tinker with once I’m back. Have them running double speed by the time I’m done.”

“Yeah, double speed,” I sneer as yet another batch of troops go running past. “This place definitely needs motivation.” 

She sits with me on the edge of a massive tire and soon we’re left relatively alone. Gale is nearby, talking with some commanders, planning the extraction, but I tune him out. I don’t want to hear. Unlike most people, Evelyn doesn’t feel the need to fill the air with pointless conversation. She seems perfectly content to sit in silence beside me, and I’m grateful. 

“How’d you meet Kane?” I ask, careful with my words. A group of soldiers walk by, bundled in thick gear. It’s cold in 13 today, even for me, but Evelyn hasn’t appeared to notice. She’s wearing a thin long sleeve shirt and pants, with only a ratty purple scarf loosely bound around her neck. She seems taken aback at first, but quickly adjusts. 

“Victory tour, in 3,” she reaches up and touches the scarf when she answers. “Beetee and Wiress were there to greet me. Kane was already training under Beetee by then. I convinced the Capitol to let me visit 3 more often. They were more than happy I had a romance in my life. The Capitol eats that stuff up.” 

“Don’t I know it,” I scoff and we both laugh, but her smile quickly fades. There are tears in her eyes, brimming just at the edge, but she doesn’t set them free. As good as Evelyn is at hiding the pain, she can’t hide it all. I’m not sure what to do, so I pat her leg awkwardly, as if that might help, and say the only thing that comes to mind. “Thank you for finding Peeta. Thank you both.” 

She smiles at me and looks out at the transporters, the muffled voices still whispering in her ear.

There's not much that Evelyn and I share, not much in terms of conversation to fill the empty air, but I don't necessarily feel the need to. She doesn't seem to mind the quiet, and I know she's as nervous as I am about the extraction. I remember how Peeta would ask me about random things when I was worried about Prim, when I was worried the Capitol would take her to punish me, that it helped to distract me.

"What did you and Kane do in 3?" I ask her. "When you'd visit him." She smiles and taps a few times on her screen.

"Mostly debate over whether electrical or mechanical engineering was harder," she says with a smirk. "Spent most of our time in Beetee's lab messing around with R&D. We'd bounce ideas off each other, fight, throw things. Hardly romantic."

"And the Capitol still believed you two were lovebirds?" I scoff.

"Yeah, well," Evelyn replies, "they aren't the smartest. And they don't know much about their victors anyway, but you know that."

I nod.

"I guess I was lucky, though," Evelyn continues, pulling a mangled iron rod that might have once been a screwdriver from her boot and using it to dig the mud out from her treads. "I got out of the Capitol before they could do much more damage. I didn't get addicted to morphling, didn't get sucked into the _social circles_." I think back to the Tribute Parade from the 75th Games, how Finnick had offered me his sugar cube and whispered of the sweeter tastes of the Capitol elite. 

"So, you were never bought?" I ask, thinking of how confidently Finnick had displayed himself to the crowds. Evelyn's face drops for a moment and she stares at her boots before looking up again.

"Twice," she says and I immediately regret asking. It's far too personal, too horrible of a thing for me to be asking. "The first guy was nice," Evelyn continues, though I never expected her to. "Young, handsome, charming. He knew what he was doing, for sure, and he was sweet. It wasn't bad, for my first." I swallow and steal a glance at Evelyn. "The second guy wasn't nice. He was older, still pretty good looking, but he wasn't sweet." Evelyn stops and lets her rod rest against the heal of her boot, and I worry that I pushed her too far. "It wasn't until afterward that I found out they were friends. They liked tricking victors. The first guy would come and he'd be sweet and gentle, make them feel comfortable, even welcome it, maybe think it wasn't so bad. Then the second would come and make them wish they'd never thought so in the first place. I was seventeen. The next week I left for my tour."

"And...and then you met Kane?" I ask, hoping to steer the conversation back toward more pleasant memories for Evelyn. I must be right because she starts smiling immediately.

"Yeah," she says, tapping on her screen. "They always allot you time to spend with the other Victors, and Kane was already training with Beetee. Honestly, I was pretty suspicious of him at first. Young, handsome, charming. Just like..." She trails off. "But he actually was sweet. Nice, funny, smart. He never pushed me, never pressured me. I think he knew he could never really understand what I'd been through, with the Games and everything. It took some time, but eventually I could...again."

I stare down at my feet, the thin boots floating in the middle of a muddy brown puddle. I think of Finnick and Annie, how lucky they'd been to find each other, and I wish that they'd only done it sooner. But then Finnick wouldn't have been such a wealth of information. Was it worth it? To sacrifice someone's humanity for something as intangible as intelligence? I suppose it has something to do with the balance of war, weighing the survival of one against the survival of many. Like Kane. Like Finnick. Like Johanna. Like me.

A few hours later the transport takes off, disappearing into the fading light of dusk with Gale, the extraction team, and any hopes of bringing Peeta back. I stand on the platform and watch them shrink in the distance until they're nothing but specks.


	5. Chapter 5

Evelyn’s transporter makes it back first and I go straight to the hanger to see them. She crawls down the back ramp before they’ve even touched down and jumps the last few feet to the ground of the hanger, her boots slamming into the cement. She looks relatively unscathed, even the purple scarf still hugs her neck defiantly. I run up to her, but she’s swept up by a tech team before I can talk to her. The rest of her intel team is similarly claimed, no doubt dragged off to the nearest screen to input whatever intelligence they could gather. Eventually, though, she finds me. 

I’m sitting in the hall outside Coin’s command center, hoping to pick up any scrap of information on the extraction, when she comes striding down the hall. 

“Evelyn!” I jump to my feet as she approaches. “What happened? What happened with the extraction?” 

I had watched Finnick’s transmission in Beetee’s lab, spoke to Snow for the first time in months. Then the signal had cut and we couldn’t do anything but wait for the transporters to make it back across the Capitol’s outer limits. Once they did, I’d been kept in the dark. All I know is that some of them made it out. Which ones, I’m not sure, or if they were even successful.

“All three transporters made it back over the Capitol’s defense line,” Evelyn says. “They’re keeping comm to a minimum, but-” Suddenly, the door slides open beside us and Coin emerges. 

“Evelyn, good,” she says. I can see Beetee and Haymitch in the room behind her. “You’re safe. What a relief. We need whatever you were able to decrypt from the files you salvaged.” Evelyn doesn’t respond, only looks back at me. 

“Can Katniss come in?” she asks and I momentarily remind myself to thank her later. Coin considers it for a moment before nodding.

“Of course.” 

Inside the command room every screen is lit and live, showing every corner and call sight of District 13. They’re monitoring the borders, waiting for the transporters to arrive. Evelyn immediately approaches the table and stands alongside Beetee. She reaches up into her jacket and yanks at something hidden beneath. What she pulls out is a small drive and she plugs it into the dock of the table. Immediately, a stream of information and data goes pouring down the side of the massive screen and her and Beetee’s eyes dart back and forth, absorbing every digit.

“We located three more outposts in District 2,” Evelyn says, fingers dancing across the screen. “Heavy deposits of weaponry and ammunition. There’s another warehouse in 3 that we missed. According to its inventory logs it’s loaded with medical reserves. Plus, there’s a weak spot near the southern border of the Capitol’s defenses. Faulty synchronization systems. They haven’t had a chance to service it, so it’s slowly deteriorating. Power drops by the hour. In a few days it’ll be completely offline.” 

“This is incredible work, Evelyn,” Coin comes up alongside her and places a hand on her shoulder. “Excellent work. Well done.” 

I can tell that Evelyn probably doesn’t care what Coin thinks. She’s far too focused on the screen and whatever commentary Beetee’s muttering in her ear. Suddenly, there are yellow lights flashing on the screen and metered beeps ringing through the command room. Beetee reaches forward and flips a new map onto the screen, one that shows the outer limits of 13 and a trio of transporters nearing our location. 

Peeta.

“Party incoming,” Beetee says, but I’m already out the door, and Haymitch and Evelyn aren’t far behind. My feet pound against the cement floor of the hallway, and I lose my way once or twice, until Haymitch grabs me by the sleeve and yanks me in the right direction. Evelyn dashes out ahead of us, using the tiny screen on her arm to open doors before we even get to them. Haymitch falls behind, old wounds and sober lungs taking hold, so it’s only me and Evelyn that go sprinting through the hanger doors. 

People are running everywhere, but it’s not with terror or shock. It’s anxiety, anticipation, purpose. Haymitch finally scuffles in behind us, sucking down desperate breaths. Sobriety doesn’t seem to suit him. Coin and Beetee arrive and we’re all left watching the organized madness of the transport touch down. The first transporter slams to the ground and a handful of soldiers tumble out. No Gale. No Peeta. No Johanna or Annie. 

I grab the first soldier I can.

“Where’s the extraction team?” I bark. He jabs his thumb toward the other end of the hanger, toward the open hallway that leads to the medical wing. I hadn’t noticed, but the first transporter is already grounded and its ramp lays open, pointing straight at the door.

“Infirmary,” the soldier responds before dashing away. 

The third transporter is landing, the whirring of its turbines kicking up massive swells of wind, throwing my hair over my face. I stumble against the pressure and feel Haymitch tense up behind me. There’s a loud slam as the ramp hits the ground, and the sound of shouting and hurried bootsteps. I claw at the hair in my eyes and finally tear it aside in time to see the third transporter’s cargo hold empty out. A handful of soldiers, gear and boxes in their arms, but I don’t care. I’m already stepping toward the medical wing. 

Evelyn’s voice reaches my ears, a single word muttered with half a breath. I stop for a moment and turn, expecting to see her following along behind me. Instead I see her standing frozen in the middle of the hanger, eyes fixed on the door of the third transporter. She’s dropped her hands, the transmitter in her ear going unheard, unanswered, as Beetee wheels up beside her. They both share the same dazed expression, the same red-rimmed eyes whispering of tears, as they stare ahead. I follow their gaze and see a young man, tall with dark hair, step out from behind a cluster of soldiers.

“Kane?”

He’s already spotted her, and his chest heaves upon hearing her voice, as if he hasn’t breathed for an age. 

“Evie.”

And then she’s running, sprinting straight at him faster than I’ve ever seen her move, faster than her lighting fingers that blur across digital screens, faster than the bullet trains of her own design, faster than I can even blink. And she throws her arms around his neck, buries her face in his shoulder. The radio from her hip is lying on the ground, the back panel snapped off and the power cell hanging free. There’s clearly only one voice she wants to hear. 

“Evie,” Kane mutters. He’s standing still as a corpse, arm hanging at his side. The left is strapped up in a makeshift sling, the white bandages stained red and filthy brown. Slowly, he wraps his free arm around her back and lets his head drop against her shoulder. 

I steal a glimpse at Beetee. He’s staring at the two of them with a strange combination of pain and joy. Coin appears beside him, grey trousers and grey hair, a tiny smile tweaking her thin mouth. I’m happy for Evelyn, but I’m jealous. And I’m afraid. 

“Mr. Anwell,” Coin breaks the sacred silence, and Kane peels himself away from Evelyn’s shoulder, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t unwrap his arm. “It’s good to see you.” He nods, which only brings his face closer to Evelyn’s, and she presses her temple against it. It’s hard to watch them. “We’ll get that arm looked at straight away,” Coin says, pointing at the sling, “but we’ll need you to file your data as soon as possible.” 

Kane turns back to look at Evelyn and places a single kiss on her forehead. He takes her hand with is uninjured arm and they follow Coin and Beetee back to the command room, but I’m already heading toward the medical wing entrance and Haymitch is beside me.


End file.
